New research from Bankrate shows more than 4 out of 10 adults who are married, in a civil partnership, or living with a partner have kept or are keeping at least one financial secret from their partner.
Secrets include spending more than their spouse or partner would be OK with, holding any amount of secret debt, and having a secret savings account, a secret credit card, or a secret checking account.Bankrate’s Ted Rossman joined WTOP’s Dimitri Sotis to interpret the data on all this “financial cheating.”
Read and listen to their conversation below.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Ted Rossman: I was surprised that young adults are leading the way. Two-thirds of Gen Zers who are married or living with a romantic partner have kept or are keeping a financial secret from that person. More than half of millennials are doing so. It’s only about one in three Gen Xers and Boomers. So this is definitely being driven by young adults.
Dimitri Sotis: More than one in three say financial infidelity is at least as bad as physical infidelity. Do you find that shocking? Isn’t old fashioned cheating absolutely the most hurtful thing to a relationship?
Ted Rossman: It is pretty shocking. I think it goes to show how personal and emotional money can be for people. We know that money fights are one of the leading causes of divorce and other angst in a relationship. I think one possible solution here other than just plain old communicating more, but one other solution might be “yours, mine and ours.” Basically, if you and your spouse agree that you’re going to commingle a lot of your money for joint household expenses, but you can also carve out separate buckets for your own hobbies and nights out with friends. The key is that it shouldn’t be a secret, you should agree on what the parameters are. But maybe it’s a certain dollar amount or a certain percentage of every paycheck. And you each get it to be yours and yours alone and no questions asked. They can’t look over your shoulder. That actually works for a lot of people and can head off some of these fights.
Dimitri Sotis: I think that sounds like an incredibly reasonable solution. It seems an argument can be made, Ted, that in our changing world, each partner should maybe have a little of their own money, or that credit card, whatever it is, not necessarily in the shadows and in secret, but it seems to be very meaningful to people to have that little bit of themselves, if I could put it that way, not fully invested in the relationship.
Ted Rossman: I think so too. We actually found in our survey that when we ask people why they’ve kept financial secrets, the number one answer was that they wanted more privacy and independence within the relationship. So that’s where I would offer that “yours, mine and ours” approach. I think there are some unique things going on with young adults to who are driving a lot of this. Many have divorced parents. Maybe they remember what happened when mom and dad split up and now they’re keeping their own “freedom fund” if you will if the relationship doesn’t work out.
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